‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Was Unable to Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|